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MrFingers

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Everything posted by MrFingers

  1. Well... since we're posting. New to me since the beginning of the month (2019 model)
  2. This has the be the smallest bass I've ever had in my actual posession (I did have a 24" National Valco on loan for a while), and it is by far the one with the most thunderous and brutal sound. 1999 Epiphone "Elite" EB-3. From the period when Orville shut down, but before the Elitist-series were rolled out. Basically an Orville with the Epiphone name on it. To all intents and purposes an accurate copy of a pre 1965 Gibson EB-3, except for the bridge, including the rather chunky neck. Has an actual early sixties Gibson mudbucker in the neck.
  3. It's a custom built instrument, the Gildaxe SuperSonic. Based on the Fender Performer bass. https://www.bestbassgear.com/ebass/bass-of-the-week/bass-of-the-week-supersonic-bass.html The headstock reminds me of a Watkins/WEM Rapier bass, but in a more extreme form.
  4. I was first on the prow for an Elitist version, but not one popped up for sale in the EU (I've had lines open as far as Sweden, Italy & Greece). Probably a combination of not that many being sold here in the first place (they were rather expensive IIRC) + people are hanging onto them for dear life because they ARE so good). Everyone is raving about Hipshot or Babicz-bridges, but the horrendous 3-point self-destructing contraption is doing its job, so I'm sticking with it.
  5. I did have to pay my fair share to the taxman. But it was noticeable less than I expected/feared/calculated. In hindsight I got a tremendous deal on this bass. There is an agreement between the EU and Japan that import duties are being reduced to 0% for most products, so it's only the VAT of your country of residence (21% in my case) and the brokerage fee for the transporter one has to pay (for Fedex, it's 14.5€ per order, regardless of value). Those taxes scale with the price of the item you buy and the price of the shipping. Since the instrument was pretty cheap, and shipping was also on the lower end of the spectrum, the added costs were also manageable (read: lower than my mental limit I was willing to spend on it).
  6. Present but manageable. I have a very smooth & slippery tweed strap, and that makes the head go down. With a more coarse leather strap, it stays where it needs to stay. It's nowhere as bad as the 34" scale versions.
  7. Yep, it has that sound. Very thick, wooly & full!
  8. It says "Made in Japan" on the back of the headstock, and Korea never made a proper EB-3 (30.5" scale with 20 frets and wide control spacing)... not to mention the Gibson headstock that is a telltale "Japan Domestic" trait. The Elitists came with a tombstone-one for export.
  9. Since a long time I've been latently lusting after a proper EB-3 bass: shortscale, set-neck, 4-way rotary switch. With the emphasis on latently. The prices on Gibsons have exploded the last 2 years, with even playergrade late 1960's EB-0's fetching 4-figure sums, and since I'm a rather picky person, I wanted an EB-3 with the pre 1965 specifications (deep-set heel, wide control spacing), which would further bloat the price. I was aware of the Japanese versions of those (Greco, Burny, Orville, Epiphone), but those seldom if ever appear outside of Japan, and if they do, top-money gets asked for them. So I let that idea of owning an EB-3 for what it was. Then I started browsing eBay in search for a deal, and there I saw a Japanese Epiphone listed with a very short & poor description, but also at a rather low price (just a smidge more as a regular longscale Epiphone EB-3 would cost in the local store), located in Kyoto. Four people were advertising that bass so I had my suspicions it might have been a scam, as one seller had a low price, and the others were asking nearly double of it, more alike the other offerings of different instruments. So I asked the cheapest seller how that was possible, and he said that it's a central pool of instruments, and each independent seller can ask their own asking price, and the instruments are also sold locally outside of eBay. His ratings were absolutely perfect, with almost everyone saying his packing & protection was superb. It would need to be, because it's an all mahogany instrument with a Gibson-like neck (1 piece mahogany, 17° tilted headstock, big hole for the trussrod), and no case included. So after pondering on it for some weeks (hoping Epiphone would announce something for Winter-NAMM, which they didn't), I noticed 2 Sundays ago he offered a 5% discount on top of his already low price, so I thought to myself: "you know what, fck it, I'll bite. His ratings are good, I'm paying via Paypal, so I do have decent protection,...". So pressed the BIN-button, paid and then wholeheartedly expected to receive a message stating "yeah, it sold locally, I'm sorry"... But that message never came... instead I received a thank you for the payment, and a promise the item would ship on Thursday via FedEx. Could it be that that bass didn't get sold for more than 2 years, at that low of a price? On Thursday morning I received an SMS that FedEx received my package, and it was scheduled to arrive next Monday... Then a delay in Memphis, so it would be Tuesday, but on Tuesday no-one is home here, so I had to postpone to Wednesday... And on Wednesday, a white van stopped and delivered me a sturdy cardboard box (all hail FedEx' method of pre-paying customs & duties, so it clears fast). In it was a layer of bubble plastic, a layer of newspapers, another layer of bubble plastic, a gigbag (got that for free), and inside that a shape that reminded me of an instrument, in a layer of bubble plastic & foam... I peeled away the protective layers, and there it was, undamaged. I now also have enough padded plastic foil to last a lifetime. A quick test on the amplifier learned me the bridge pickup was cutting out, unless I pressed on it, meaning that a wire was shorting somewhere, but the pickup itself wasn't dead. So I opened up the patient for an overall inspection and a bit of cleaning, and saw an exposed wire touching the baseplate of the pickup. Insulated it, and the pickup worked again like it should... But then I noticed someone had been tampering with the wiring. The bridge pickup is the original GOTOH PAF-bucker with plastic-coated coax cable, but the neck pickup had been changed out for "something with a really old braided cable"... So I removed the cover of the neck pickup, and I was greeted there by something that was distinctly not a GOTOH-version of the sidewinder pickup. It was old, dusty, had a wooden spacer between the coils and measured 30k Ohm... Yep, that is a vintage Gibson mudbucker. So now I have a proper EB-3, with a really chunky 1960's neck, and the one thing the Japanese versions are considered "inferior" for (the weak neck pickup) already been replaced by a vintage Gibson unit that absolutely blasts. Ordered a set of shortscale flatwounds, will then further dial in and adjust to my likings. These crisp roundwounds aren't doing it for me. Also DIYed myself a string cover and wooden tugbar.
  10. If Epiphone can't deliver, well... I can. Started out as a regular mid nineties cherry Epiphone Rivoli I. A lefty friend of mine wanted one, so I refurbished in a pelham blue-ish color, and the wiring and pickguard of an EB2D. [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXNg2L18E5w"]Sounds humongous[/url], and is I think a unique piece. Many manly tears were shed when trying to pry in the wiring harness (big CTS potmeters with the long shaft, many wires, small F hole)...
  11. offsetguitars.com learned me that sweetwater had a batch in yesterday, but all were already pre-ordered. The shop where I ordered (and cancelled) mine said "January 2014, that's the earliest", and that's a "Fender Authorized Dealer".
  12. Ampeg Scrolls, with their "see through" F-holes
  13. Yes, you can copyright shapes, the difference is in the law. In the US, the law says that having a copyright doesn't mean you can "lay back and watch mayhem unfold over those who copy" (in the rest of the world you can do that), you have to [b]actively[/b] search for violations. Fender & Gibson also have copyrights on shapes (mostly headstock designs), but they didn't care to actively search for violators, and when things got messy, and they wanted to cease the production of copies of their design, the court said "yes, but you had to actively protect your design, you failed to do that, so basically there's nothing we can do to stop them anymore". That + there are people on the Rickenbacker-forum who are kinda elitist, and make it a sport to hunt for copies, notifying RIC (the mothercompany of Rickenbacker) and since they actively protect their copyrights, many 'cease & desist"-letters are being sent.
  14. Thomastik Infeld flatwounds... Many are lyrical about it... I find them horrendously overpriced rubber bands... And the new Fender 9050's... They feel like D'Addario (because they're made in the same factory?), I liked the older, HEAVY tension, very tough ones better)
  15. If I recall correctly, the "Labella Original 1954" (0760M) remained unchanged. And the elder Fender 9050 (the ones with the real high tension, from 5-6 years back) were the same as the ones in the sixties.
  16. It's here (bought it secondhand from someone), and it's awesome! Did the "bridge-reversal-mod", got it intonated with the stock strings, but a set of LaBella flats is on the way. And while I agree with "Essential Tension", I have to say that the song Galveston is cool as well! Fit & Finish are superb, I do have a nicely cut nut (not all Squier VI's have that I noticed), and sounds really like a VI should. Played as a fingerstyle bass: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5iJBoVSIn8[/media] Played as a guitar: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHJUvO2Gr8g[/media] My setup includes: "raising the bridge & bridgepickup to absurd heights, so I have enough downward pressure on the saddles. And shimming the neck.
  17. Can happen, the '68 Coronado I had here at home had a (subtle) BE as well:
  18. Vintage Fenders have the square covers, the first ReIssues (1981 I guess) had the round ones.
  19. grey bobbin, Alnico II magnets, enamel wire and wound around 12K.
  20. There is no such thing as "the sixties pickup", since there are the black bobbin pickups with Formvar coated wire and slightly bigger magnets (until 03/1964) and the greybobbin with Enamel coated wire with smaller magnets (1964 onwards). A 1966 pickup should be virtually identical to a 1977 pickup, except maybe the amounts of windings, those varied since it was done by hand (sixties) or by an inaccurate machine (seventies), and the use of "whatever we can find" wire in the later seventies. What's a major soundchanger is the bass itself. An alder body with a HUGE maple neck with rosewood fretboard (sixties) sounds very different than an ash bodied with a thinner all-maple neck (seventies).
  21. it's a 34" scale neck, that's why it's set deeper in the body, and the bridge is further towards the back.
  22. I put this ad here for a friend of mine. He acquired an unlined maple fretless P-neck, and is now letting go of the older neck he had. It's a [b]1979 Fretless P-bass neck[/b], with [b]ReIssue[/b] but period-correct Schaller "Fender-stamped" Tuners. The neck was originally an unlined fretless, but the previous owner had it fretted and defretted again, so there are [b]fretlines[/b], but [b]no facedots[/b]. Sidedots are on the fretless-position (on the position, not in between them like on a fretted neck). Apart from that there isn't much to say. 42mm nutwidth, normal C-shape, virtually no fingerboard wear,... It's a great opportunity for the fretless player who lusters after a vintage P-neck but is reluctant to start playing unlined fretless (that's how they came in the seventies). He's asking 400€ for the neck and the tuners, excl. shipping. The neck is located in The Netherlands, but shipping isn't an issue. Since it's for a friend of mine, please contact him directly via mail on:[b] jackwesselius[funky"a"sign]yahoo[dot]com[/b], and not via PM please [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0559.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0558.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0557.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0556.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0555.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0554.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0553.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0552.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0551.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0550.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0550.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Jazzboer/zervamelmapje/Jack/IMAG0560.jpg[/IMG] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NEPlv3Bk34[/media] The neck in action (excuses for the ugly sweater)
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